Thursday, June 25, 2015

1940: British Strategic Choices Part II

The rugged Whitley was
the principal British bomber during the early days of World War II. It was the
first British aircraft to drop bombs on German soil since 1918 and saw
extensive use up through the end of the war.When World War II commenced in September 1939, Whitleys comprised the
mainstay of RAF Bomber Command’s frontline strength. It was marginally obsolete
and overshadowed by the more modern Wellingtons and Hampdens, but in service it
accomplished a number of aviation firsts. After spending the first year
dropping leaflets over Germany, in August 1940 Whitleys became the first
British aircraft to drop bombs on Berlin since World War I.

Even the Germans themselves might be expected to share in
the process of revolt. The British government had by the summer of 1940 given
up on those internal opponents of Hitler who had so often expressed their
opposition before the war and in the winter of 1939-40. All they had done, it
seemed, was whisper conspiracy and then carry out Hitler's policies of invading
neutrals with enthusiasm and efficiency. Churchill, it must be remembered, had
been in the government which received the messages that if Great Britain would
promise to allow Germany to keep Hitler's loot—or at least most of it—the
military would topple him. He would hark back to that experience when
approaches from German opponents of Hitler reached London in later years. It was
in this context that the British turned for a while to the rather unlikely idea
of getting the dissident Nazi Otto Strasser to raise a revolt within Germany
against both Hitler and the old elites cooperating with him; nothing came of it
all, but it reflects the thinking of a government that hoped someday to find
successor regimes in all of Nationalist Socialist controlled Europe.

While the imposition of Nazi rule was believed likely to
create conditions for anti-German revolts in the occupied areas, those
conditions would be further exacerbated not only by the sabotage SOE would
hopefully organize, but also by the impact of the blockade and bombing.
Enforcement of economic warfare measures was believed likely to strain the
German war economy and the situation in German-occupied Europe to a vastly
greater extent than turned out to be the case, in part because of the basic
misassessment of the German economy previously referred to. There was,
furthermore, an even more hopelessly inaccurate perception of what could be
accomplished by bombing. Not until 1942 was some degree of realism injected
into the assessment of the possible effectiveness of bomber operations against
Germany; but what must be recognized, if the subsequent course of the war in
Europe is to be understood, is that in the summer of 1940 and for considerable
time thereafter the bombing offensive looked like and in fact was the only
practical way for Britain to strike at the Germans. The German invasion
preparations could be and were interfered with by attacks on the port
facilities from which any invasion might be launched as well as on the ships
being gathered there for the purpose. But beyond that essentially defensive
project lay the offensive one of attacking German and German-controlled industries
and cities. And that meant a major commitment of material and human resources
to the building up of Bomber Command, the British strategic air force. The
impetus given to this program by Churchill in the summer of 1940 helped define
the British effort until the end of the war.

In the midst of these preparations to defend themselves
against invasion and destroy German control of Europe by blockade, bombing,
subversion, and the eventual return of small contingents of troops, the British
government was not interested in checking out some vague peace soundings coming
out of Germany. Churchill was willing to use the theoretical possibility of any
successor government handing the British fleet over to Germany as a means of
pressuring the United States into providing more aid to stave off a German
victory, and some in the British diplomatic service suggested a somewhat
similar scare tactic of warning of a possible Anglo-German peace to awaken the
Soviet Union to the dangers facing them in their continued support of Germany.
The record shows, however, that the government was not interested in exploring
any possibilities of a negotiated peace, the assumption being that no terms
offered by Germany would be acceptable—and that any acceptable terms could not
be trusted.

By the time Hitler made a public gesture, suggesting on July
19 that England should call off the war, the government in London had long
passed beyond considering such possibilities, and it was left to Lord Halifax
to reply with a public rejection. Hitler's assertions in his speech that the
Allies had been about to invade Holland and Belgium, that the British had
bombed Freiburg, and that they should now simply leave him with his conquests
were not likely to inspire confidence in a government which knew that he was
lying. Hitler made fun of the British government's intention to continue the
war from Canada if necessary, noting that the British population would then be
left behind to face the harsh realities of war. He refrained from explaining
his government's intention of deporting the male population aged 17-45 to the
continent, but people and government in England had some understanding of the
nature of Hitler's "generosity" without needing to have it spelled
out.

In holding on, the British looked for support to the United
States. They would need weapons made in the United States, and they faced the
early exhaustion of the financial resources needed to pay for them, a process
necessarily speeded up both by London's taking over the French contracts in
America and any increasing deliveries of American arms. The United States was
neutral, though most of its people were sympathetic to the Allied cause. There
was some talk of improving German-American relations again on both sides in
early 1940, but nothing came of the idea of returning the ambassadors who had
been recalled in November 1938, when the United States reacted against the
anti-Jewish violence in Germany. The ideological differences were too great.

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About Me

Mitch Williamson is a technical writer with an
interest in military and naval affairs. He has published articles in
Cross & Cockade International and Wartime magazines. He was
research associate for the Bio-history Cross in the Sky, a book about
Charles 'Moth' Eaton's career, in collaboration with the flier's son,
Dr Charles S. Eaton. He also assisted in picture research for John
Burton's Fortnight of Infamy.
Mitch is now publishing on the WWW various specialist websites combined
with custom website design work.